It has been a heavy week. Violence, tragedy, grief. And if we are honest, we do not just see it out there — we feel it in here. A week like this leaves everybody wanting answers, and it leaves your mouth parched and dry.
That is exactly where the woman at the well was. She had drunk deeply from the world and it had left her dry, and she wanted to know if there was more.
She did not find another well. She found the one who claimed to be living water.
So here is the question for today. What well are you drinking from?
Jesus goes where nobody goes
Verse 4 says he had to pass through Samaria.
He did not have to. Most Jews went around it. Understand what Samaria meant to these people. Deep, multi-generational hatred — think Israeli and Palestinian today, or Hutu and Tutsi in Rwanda. Israel split after Solomon, ten tribes north and two south, both claiming the true place to meet God. Assyria overran the north, and the people who moved in intermarried and blended their religions together, so the southern Jews looked at Samaritans as half-breeds who only accepted part of the Bible. Later, Jerusalem destroyed the Samaritan temple. It was that old and that ugly.
The Pharisees insulted Jesus by calling him a Samaritan. And Jesus turned around and made a Samaritan the hero of one of his most famous stories.
Most Jews just walked around the whole problem. Sort of like Thanksgiving dinner, when you steer clear of the subject you know will set your cousin off.
Jesus went straight in.
That is what love actually looks like. We played a quick game called Love It or Leave It — pickleball, tennis, that turquoise water, a week in the mountains — and it proved one thing. When you love something, you will pay for it. You will be inconvenienced for it. You will be uncomfortable for it. Real love is not riding into the sunset holding hands. Real love is sacrificial.
It cost Jesus. His disciples came back and could not believe he was talking to this woman. And she was at the well in the heat of the day for a reason — nobody else was there, and she was tired of being reminded of her mistakes.
That is precisely where he met her.
Jacob dug a well. Jesus is the water.
Do not miss what John is doing with the setting. Jacob was the forefather both sides claimed. He dug this well and he bought this land, and they had been arguing over that ground for centuries.
Watch the pattern.
Jacob dug a well. Jesus is the living water.
Jacob bought the land. Jesus owns it all, and he is leading us to the promised land.
Jacob wrestled God for a blessing. Jesus is the blessing.
Jacob was the father of Israel. Jesus is Lord of all.
Jacob was the shadow. Jesus is the fulfillment.
She came to that well the way she came every day. Fill it, haul it home, come back tomorrow. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Jesus tells her about a different kind of water — the kind you drink once and never thirst again, that becomes a spring welling up inside you.
They knew the Dead Sea, where everything flows in and nothing flows out. And they knew Galilee, where the water moves and things live.
And then this. She says she knows the Messiah is coming. And Jesus tells her, I who speak to you am he.
He did not say that to Nicodemus. He said it to her. To a Samaritan woman, at noon, alone, with a reputation.
The wells that leave you dry
Hers was relationships. Five husbands, and the man she was with was not one of them. She kept going back to that well looking for life.
Maybe yours is possessions. If I just had a little more, I would finally be set. Maybe position — that title, that opportunity, that promotion. Maybe popularity, the likes and the friends and the coach who finally picks you. Maybe pleasure. If I just do this one more time, then I will be satisfied.
Every one of them leaves your mouth parched and dry.
I was looking for life in all the wrong places in college, until somebody had the nerve to call me what I was — a hypocrite — and told me about God's grace.
Not long after that I saw Heidi. Fifteen track and field records. All-American in strength and conditioning — they called her Quadzilla, and I will admit I like strong legs in a woman. Honor society president. Every senior in the school was chasing her, and I was a lowly freshman. My buddies told me she was way out of my coverage. They were right. I could not look away.
We started dating my sophomore year, and I could not believe she liked me. Then we had a disagreement — meaning I did not see things reasonably her way — and it ended. Her friends said another one bit the dust.
Here is what wrecked me. I was not only sad. I was embarrassed, because now it was public. And I had to sit with the question of who I actually was if she did not want me. A good gift had quietly become the ultimate thing. That is the definition of an idol.
So we both leaned hard into Christ instead. And the stranger it sounds, the truer it was: the more okay we each became on our own, the more our hearts came back together. We were no longer two leeches trying to draw life out of each other. Twenty-two years next month. Five kids. She survived me.
Relationships, possessions, power, position, popularity, pleasure — these are good gifts from God. Make one of them ultimate and it becomes an idol, and we were not created for idols.
She left the jar
The best detail in the chapter is small. She left her water jar. Just set it down on the ground and walked into town and told everyone about the man who told her everything she ever did.
That is the point of living water. It does not stop with you. It fills you and then it flows through you, because a thirsty world needs to hear it. By the end of the chapter the whole town has come out, and they believe for themselves.
He is the greater well.
So — what well are you drinking from this morning, and how dry has it left you?
